Tchatter

By Simon

Recently I came across a couple of French words I hadn’t seen before – tchatter /tʃa.te/ (to chat) and tchat /tʃat/ (chat). As far as I can tell, they seem to refer particularly to online chat. The definition of tchatter on Reverso is “discuter avec d’autres personnes en temps réel depuis un ordinateur.” (to talk with other people in real time via a computer).

Similar words include:

– tchatche /tʃatʃ/, which Reverso defines as ‘jabberism’ (have you heard that one before?), patter, loquacity, verbosity, blather, etc. and which appears in the phrase avoir (de) la tchatche or ‘to have the gift of the gab’.

– tchatcher /tʃa.tʃe/ – to talk a lot and charmingly

– tchatcheur /tʃa.tʃœʁ/ – a great boaster; a voluable or talkative person.

Another French word for to chat is bavarder, and alternatives to tchatter include bavarder en ligne, cyberbavarder and clavarder – the latter is apparently used in Quebec and is a portmanteau of clavier (keyboard) and bavarder.

According to Wikitionaire tchatter, which is also written chatter and chater, comes from the English word chat, which comes from the Middle English word chateren (to chatter), which is thought to be of imitative origin.

Tchatcher and related words apparently come via Pied-Noir slang from the Spanish word chachara (an animated but futile conversation).

Languages in Canada

By Simon

According to the 2011 census in Canada, more than 200 languages are currently spoken in Canada. As well as English and French, increasing numbers of people speak Chinese, Punjabi, Arabic, Persian, Spanish and Tagalog, with the numbers of Tagalog speakers growing most in recent years.

Some 20% of the population, 6.6 million people, speak a language other than English or French at home. The majority speak an immigrant language, while 213,000 speak an aboriginal language, and 25,000 use sign language. In comparison, 58% of the population (19.2 million) speak only English at home, while 18.2% (6 million) only speak French. The proportion of people in Quebec who only speak French has decline somewhat to 72.8%. In Quebec the number of people bilingual in French and English has increased slightly, while elsewhere it has decreased slightly.

Most of the immigrant languages are spoken in the major cities, so if you’re learning or planning to learn Punjabi, you’ll find plenty of people to practise with in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. In Montreal and Ottawa there are plenty of Arabic and Spanish speakers; there are concentrations of Tagalog speakers in Calgary and Edmonton, and quite a few Italian speakers in Montreal, and there are lots of people who speak Chinese languages in all these cities, except Montreal.

To be in the perfume

By Simon

Yesterday I discovered that one way to say that you’re familiar with something in French is être au parfum, or literally “to be in the perfume of”. Anyone know why perfume is involved in this expression?

English equivalents include ‘to be in the know’, ‘to be clued up’, ‘to be on the ball’, ‘to be in the loop’ – can you think of any others?

Another way to say this in French is être au courant (‘to be in the current’).

Some related expressions in other languages.

A related expression in French is mettre au parfum (‘to put in the perfume’), which means to provide all the necessary information, to put sb in the know.

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon

– l’indication (f) = clue = arwydd, cliw = arouez
– l’indice (m) = clue (in investigation) = arwydd, cliw = merk rumm
– la définition = clue (in crosswords) = arwydd, cliw
– être au parfum = to be clued up = bod yn gyfarwydd â
– la nageoire = fin (of fish) = asgell = angell
– l’aileron = fin (of shark, dophin) = asgell = angell
– maître nageur (euse) / surveillant de plage = lifeguard = achubwr bywydau = mestr neuñver saveteer
– la marionnette (à gaine) = (hand/glove) puppet = pyped (llaw/maneg) = margodenn
– le pôle Nord = the North Pole = Pegwn/Pôl y Gogledd = penn-ahel an Norzh
– la rougeur / l’éruption (f) = rash = brech = ruzded / brec’h
– la boussole = compass (for navigation) = cwmpawd = nadoz-vor
– le compas = compass (for drawing circles) = cwmpas = kelc’hier, kompaz

Sentence bank

By Simon

I’ve decided to learn some more Breton and have found a very useful website – the Breizh-Llydaw Sentence Bank (y Cronfa Frawddegau Breizh-Llydaw / Ar gevredigezh Kembre-Breizh) – a bilingual corpus of sentences in Breton and Welsh from the magazine Breizh-Llydaw. I can understand the Welsh sentences and can more or less work out the meanings of the Breton words from the context. I think I’ll use it to learn Breton vocabulary and grammar in context.

Does anybody know of any similar bilingual corpuses for other languages?

Related tools include Geriaoueg, a Breton, French, Welsh, English, Icelandic, Catalan, Spanish dictionary; and morphological analysers for Breton and Welsh.

Linguistic landscape

By Simon

Last Saturday I went to a study day about the Isle of Man put on by the Centre for North-West Regional Studies at Lancaster University. One of the talks was about the Manx language and used quotes from my dissertation – it was great to be recognised like that, and the speaker was quite surprised when I introduced myself to him afterwards.

As well as touching on the decline and revival of the language, he also looked at the linguistic landscape of Manx – i.e. the ways Manx is appears on signs and on printed material. What he demonstrated was that Manx translations are often smaller than the English ones, and/or in a different font. The most common fonts are in the Irish uncial style, or An Cló Gaelach. This gives the impression that Manx is less important than English, he suggested.

Here are some examples:

Some bilingual Manx signs

There are more examples on Flickr.

He compared the Manx signs with bilingual signs in Wales, on which both languages are usually the same size and font, and with the Welsh usually first.

Some bilingual Welsh signs

He also mentioned that in Quebec the French is usually twice as big as the English, or other language, on signs.

If you live in an area where there are bilingual or multilingual signs, what is the linguistic landscape like?

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon

– la côte = rib = asen = kostenn
– la cage thoracique = rib cage = cawell asennau = kest ar brusk
– le couple = rib (of boat) = asen = koubl
– la coque = hull = corff llong = korf ar vag
– l’armature (f) = frame(work), bone, underwiring = ffrâm, fframwaith = frammadur
– prouver, avérer = prove = profi = prou(v)iñ, donet
– le sous-bock, le rond à bière = beermat = mat cwrw
– le bock = beer glass, glass of beer = gwydr cwrw = bok
– dénonciateur, corbeau = whistle-blower = chwythwr chwiban = disklêrier
– ringard, old school = cheesy, naff = sathredig, ystrydebol, ffuantus = kaoc’h kazh
– le pied = leg (table, chair) = coes
– le dossier = back (chair) = cefn – kein
– le siège = seat (chair) = sêt = sez
– le réduction, la rabais = discount = disgownt = rabat, diskar

De cette semaine le mots de la semaine seront en français, anglais, gallois et breton.

From this week the words of the week will be in French, English, Welsh and Breton.

O’r wythnos ‘ma byddan eiriau yr wythnos yn Ffrangeg, Saesneg, Cymraeg a Llydaweg.

Language is shaped by brain’s desire for clarity and ease

By Simon

According to an experiment by researchers at the University of Rochester and Georgetown University, changes emerge in languages to ensure that they can communicate meaning as precisely and concisely as possible. If languages contain too much redundancy or complexity, they tend to change to achieve a balance between effort and clarity. This may be a reason why similar structures are found in many languages.

The researchers used artificial languages they created to test their ideas and taught them to monoglot English-speaking students. They showed the students images, animations and recordings, and asked them to use the artificial languages to describe what they saw or heard. The languages used suffixes to mark the subject and object of a sentence, and the students tended to use the suffixes to clarify the meaning where it was unclear or ambiguous more than when the meaning was obvious.

One researcher said that “”Language acquisition can repair changes in languages to insure they don’t undermine communication,” and that “new generations can perhaps be seen as renewing language, rather than corrupting it”.

Another researcher commented that contractions, abbreviations and other aspects of informal speech are ways of making language more efficient, though are only used if it’s possible to infer the meaning from the context.